[February 1883. BULLETIN ‘BRUOKLYN EN'TOM. SOC: VOL. V. 77 
Notice of an “Illustrated Essay on the Noctuides 
of North America.” 
By Co Va KiLey, Nese sei WD: 
There has lately been published by John Van Voorst, of London, 
Eng., a work by the above title and prepared by Mr. Augustus Radcliffe 
Grote. The publisher has done his work most creditably, and given 
us four rather highly colored plates of some of our most conspicuous 
moths. 
The text consists chiefly of second-hand matter, the original source, 
with one exception, not being given: while in the few original pages 
which adorn the ‘‘Essay” the author has seen fit to vent some of his wrath 
against the writer. As the work is particularly addressed to English ento- 
mologists among whom I count some warm personal friends, I have con- 
cluded to publish a few facts which, though widely known here, may 
not be so well known abroad. In doing this it will be unnecessary either 
to criticize the loose style or the irrelevant polemics of the prefatory 
portion of the volume, or to indulge in its unseemly personality. 
Anent the Cotton Worm* Mr. Grote says, (p. 11) that he has 
watched this and different species of Noctuidze, ‘‘from the egg to the moth 
stage” and then gives his observations which the reader is told are taken 
‘from the Alabama Geological Report.” There are several Alabama Geolo- 
gical Reports, but the one Mr. Grote refers to is that for 1875, and the na- 
tural history, as given in the “‘Essay” (pp. 11—15), is taken bodily there- 
from, faults and all, with one important omission. This omission is sig- 
nificant in the light of his later writing, because it is the paragraph which 
commits him to the theory of the annual dying out of the species in the 
United States and its annual importation from’ more Southern countries — 
a theory credited to, ‘‘a series of observations in Southern and Central 
Alabama”. The theory was, however, fully promulgated long before** and 
* Anomis xylina (Say.) or supposed Aletia argillacea Huebn. See remarks, 
p- 56 of Genl. Index and Suppl. to the Mo. Entomol. Reports. Mr. Grote has charac- 
tererized these remarks as ‘disingenuous’? (New Check List etc. p. 33, note). The 
simple facts are that my’ Bahia material, though more closely resembling Huebner’s 
figures than Say’s aylina, was yet too poor to permit a positive decision. 
** See Thos. Affleck, Am. Agriculturist, 1846, (Vol. 5, p. 342), D. B. Gorham; 
De Bow’s Review, 1847, (Vol. 3, p. 535,) and W. J. Burnett, Proc. Bost, Soc. Nat. 
Hist. 1854. (Vol. 4, p. 316.) 
